Chapter 2 - Blood Money and Black Tires
"Mom, what's happening?!" I screamed as Mara dragged me down the marble staircase, my patent-leather shoes skidding over the wet steps.
Behind us, heavy footfalls thundered against the stone. Two men in dark suits with earpieces were sprinting down the foyer, completely ignoring the stunned gasps of the society guests who had spilled out of the dining hall.
"Just run, June! Don't look back!"
Mara didn't bother using the coat check. She blasted through the heavy brass entrance doors into the freezing November downpour. The rain hit us like a bucket of ice water, instantly soaking my hair and turning my mother’s borrowed navy dress into a heavy, dripping rag.
"Hey! Lady! Stop right there!" a security guard yelled from the perimeter booth.
Mara didn't stop. She hit the unlock button on her key fob, and our rusty 2012 Honda Civic chirped in the VIP gravel lot. She shoved me into the passenger seat, threw herself behind the wheel, and slammed the door just as a burly security guard slammed his palms against the driver's side window.
"Ma'am, step out of the vehicle! Mr. Ashford wants a word!"
Mara cranked the ignition. The engine sputtered, wheezed, and then roared to life. She slammed the shifter into reverse, stomped the gas, and the rear bumper clipped the guard’s knee, knocking him into a sculpted hedge.
Tires screeched on wet gravel. We spun around, our headlights cutting through the blinding rain, and shot down the winding driveway toward the massive wrought-iron gates.
The heavy black bars were already swinging shut, grinding on their tracks.
"Mom! The gate!" I shrieked, clutching my seatbelt.
"Hold on to something!" she screamed back.
Instead of hitting the brakes, she pressed the pedal straight to the floor. The Civic surged forward, throwing us back against the worn fabric seats. With a deafening crunch of metal and shattering glass, the Civic’s steel bumper slammed into the converging iron gates just before they locked.
The driver’s side headlight exploded. The iron groaned, buckled, and gave way, scraping down the entire passenger side with a shriek that set my teeth on edge. We burst through into the dark mountain road, Fishtailing wildly across the yellow lines before Mara wrestled the wheel straight.
My heart was hammering in my ears so loud I could barely breathe. Water was leaking through a crack in the windshield.
"Mom..." I sobbed, clutching the ring against my chest. "Who was that boy in the picture? Why did he have Dad's eyes? Why did that man try to grab me?"
Mara was staring dead ahead into the storm, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. Her jaw was clamped so tight a muscle was twitching under her ear.
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"Your father’s real name wasn't David Miller, June," she said, her voice shaking with an icy rage I had never heard before. "His name was Julian Ashford. And that man back there... that was his brother. The brother who told the world Julian died in a fire twelve years ago."
Before I could even process the words, a pair of blinding high-beam headlights materialized in the rearview mirror, closing the distance at eighty miles an hour.
